Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

JWST Built with ‘Unobtainium’

The ISIM Structure in the vacuum in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Space Environment Simulator. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the much anticipated, long awaited “next generation” telescope, which we hope will look further back in time, and deeper within dusty star forming regions, using longer wavelengths and more sensitivity than any previous space telescope. In order to take us to this next level, you’d kinda figure that new technologies would have to be developed in order for this ground-breaking, super-huge telescope to be built. You’d be right.

In fact, engineers had to use a little unobtainium to build the one-of-a-kind chassis, the backbone that will hold the spacecraft together.

Unobtainium isn’t just the name of the material mined in James Cameron’s movie “Avatar.” It is a word used in engineering — and sometimes fiction – to describe any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material or device needed to fulfill a given design for a given application.

The chassis for JWST – called the the Integrated Science Instrument Module ISIM – is made of a never-before-manufactured composite material which had to withstand the super-cold temperatures it will encounter when the observatory reaches its orbit 1.5-million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth.

The ISIM just passed an extremely important test, surviving temperatures that plunged as low as 27 Kelvin (-411 degrees Fahrenheit), colder than the surface of Pluto during a cycle of testing in Goddard’s Space Environment Simulator — a three-story thermal-vacuum chamber that simulates the temperature and vacuum conditions found in space.

The team at Goddard Space Flight Center who were charged with building the chassis needed a material that would assure the various instruments on JWST would maintain a precise cryogenic alignment and stability, yet survive the extreme gravitational forces experienced during launch.

The test was done to find out whether the car-sized structure contracted and distorted as predicted when it cooled from room temperature to the frigid — very important since the science instruments must maintain a specific location on the structure to receive light gathered by the telescope’s 6.5-meter (21.3-feet) primary mirror. If the structure shrunk or distorted in an unpredictable way due to the cold, the instruments no longer would be in position to gather data about everything from the first luminous glows following the Big Bang to the formation of star systems capable of supporting life.

When they first began, there was nothing out there that remotely fit the description of what was needed. So, that left one alternative: developing their own as-yet-to-be manufactured material, which team members jokingly referred to as “unobtainium.” Through mathematical modeling, the team discovered that by combining two composite materials, it could create a carbon fiber/cyanate-ester resin system that would be ideal for fabricating the structure’s square tubes that measure 75-mm (3-inch) in diameter.

During the recent 26-day test, and with repeated cycles of testing, the truss-like assembly designed by Goddard engineers did not crack. The structure shrunk as predicted by only 170 microns — the width of a needle —when it reached 27 Kelvin (-411 degrees Fahrenheit), far exceeding the design requirement of about 500 microns. “We certainly wouldn’t have been able to realign the instruments on orbit if the structure moved too much,” said ISIM Structure Project Manager Eric Johnson. “That’s why we needed to make sure we had designed the right structure.”

This type of structure could serve NASA in the future for the next-generation beyond JWST, and could also be a “spinoff” that manufacturers could find useful in designing structures that demand a high tolerance in conditions.

Source: NASA Goddard

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Solar Dynamics Observatory Earns its Stripes

Is this a new object is space that is half Sun and half Jupiter? Sunpiter? Credit: NASA/SDO

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“Now we know what it would look like if Jupiter and the sun had a child,” joked Ralph Seguin of the Lockheed-Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, trying to explain this weird image. So, just what is it? Some people have been calling it “Sunpiter,” since parts of it looks like the Sun, and other parts look like Jupiter. It really is the Sun, as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was having a tough day. Normally, SDO gets a great view of the Sun, but the spacecraft occasionally gets its view blocked by the Earth, in a unusual kind of eclipse. This image is a composite of multiwavelength images and a magnetogram taken by SDO just as the sun was emerging from its daily blackout. “SDO has entered eclipse season,” said Seguin. “Around the time of the equinoxes, the spacecraft, Earth, and sun can line up almost perfectly. Once a day for about an hour, Earth blocks SDO’s view of the sun.” And this is the result.

Magnetograms are computed from a series of images taken over a short time span. The ribbons of color result from Earth’s motion across the sun during the series of exposures. This eclipse season for SDO lasts until October 6, 2010.

You can see a short movie clip here of what SDO sees during an eclipse, which isn’t much.

Source: Spaceweather.com

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

STEREO Catches Mercury Acting Like a Comet

An image of Mercury’s tail obtained from combining a full day of data from a camera aboard the STEREO-A spacecraft. The reflected sunlight off the planet's surface results in a type of over-exposure that causes Mercury to appear much larger than its actual size. The tail-like structure extending anti-sunward from the planet is visible over several days and spans an angular size exceeding that of a full Moon in the night sky. Credit: Boston University

The STEREO mission to study the Sun also has observed some unusual comet-like features exhibited by the planet Mercury, with a coma of tenuous gas surrounding the planet and a very long tail extending away from the sun. These types of features had been seen before from telescopes on Earth, but the STEREO observations are helping scientists to understand the nature of the emissions coming from Mercury, which might be different from what was previously thought.

Another note of interest: the tail in the STEREO data was actually discovered by a fellow blogger, Ian Musgrave, who writes Astroblog. He is a medical researcher in Australia who has a strong interest in astronomy. Viewing the on-line data base of STEREO images and movies, Dr. Musgrave recognized the tail and sent news of it to a team of astronomers from Boston University to compare it with their observations.

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The STEREO mission has two satellites placed in the same orbit around the Sun that the Earth has, but at locations ahead and behind it. This configuration offers multi-directional views of the electrons and ions that make up the escaping solar wind. On occasion, the planet Mercury appears in the field of view of one or both satellites. In addition to its appearance as a bright disk of reflected sunlight, a ‘tail’ of emission can be seen in some of the images.

From Earth-based telescopes, astronomers have seen how the Sun’s radiation pressure pushes sodium atoms from Mercury’s surface away from the planet – and away from the Sun – creating a tail that extends many hundreds of times the physical size of Mercury.

Much closer to Mercury, several smaller tails composed of other gases, both neutral and ionized, have been found by NASA’s MESSENGER satellite as it flew by Mercury in its long approach to entering into a stable orbit there.

“We have observed this extended sodium tail to great distances using our telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas,” Boston University graduate student Carl Schmidt explained, “and now the tail can also be seen from satellites near Earth.”

“What makes the STEREO detections so interesting is that the brightness levels seem to be too strong to be from sodium,” said Boston University graduate student Carl Schmidt, lead author on a paper that was presented at European Planetary Science Congress in Rome this week.

Now, the Boston University scientists are working with the STEREO scientists to try and sort everything out.

The current focus of the team is to sort out all of the possibilities for the gases that make up the tail. Dr. Christopher Davis from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, England, a member of the STEREO team is working closely with the Boston University group on refining the brightness calibration methods, and determining the precise wavelengths of light that would get through the cameras’ filters.

“The combination of our ground-based data with the new STEREO data is an exciting way to learn as much as possible about the sources and fates of gases escaping from Mercury,” said Michael Mendillo, Professor of Astronomy at Boston University and director of the Imaging Science Lab where the work is being done.

“This is precisely the type of research that makes for a terrific Ph.D. dissertation,” Mendillo added.

Read the team’s paper: “Observations of Mercury’s Escaping Sodium Atmosphere by the STEREO Spacecraft”

Sources: European Planetary Science Congress, Boston University, Astroblog,

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

5 Things About the Next Mars Rover

Engineers install the six wheels on the Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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NASA’s next Mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida in late 2011, and arrive at a yet undecided region of Mars in August 2012. The goal of Curiosity is to assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting microbial life and conditions favorable for preserving clues about life, if it existed. JPL put together a list of five intriguing things about Curiosity:

An artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (left) serves to compare it with Spirit, one of NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

1. How Big Is It?: The Mini Cooper-sized rover is much bigger than its rover predecessors, Spirit, Opportunity and Pathfinder. Curiosity is twice as long (about 2.8 meters, or 9 feet) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004. Pathfinder, about the size of a microwave oven, landed in 1997.

2. Landing–Where and How: In November 2008, possible landing sites were narrowed to four finalists, all linked to ancient wet conditions. NASA will select a site believed to be among the most likely places to hold a geological record of a favorable environment for life. The site must also meet safe-landing criteria. The landing system is similar to a sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. After a parachute slows the rover’s descent toward Mars, a rocket-powered backpack will lower the rover on a tether during the final moments before landing. This method allows landing a very large, heavy rover on Mars (instead of the airbag landing systems of previous Mars rovers). Other innovations enable a landing within a smaller target area than previous Mars missions.

For more info about the landing site selection, see this JPL article.

3. On-board Toolkit: Curiosity will use 10 science instruments to examine rocks, soil and the atmosphere. A laser will vaporize patches of rock from a distance, and another instrument will search for organic compounds. Other instruments include mast-mounted cameras to study targets from a distance, arm-mounted instruments to study targets they touch, and deck-mounted analytical instruments to determine the composition of rock and soil samples acquired with a powdering drill and a scoop.

4. Big Wheels: Each of Curiosity’s six wheels has an independent drive motor. The two front and two rear wheels also have individual steering motors. This steering allows the rover to make 360-degree turns in-place on the Mars surface. The wheels’ diameter is double the wheel diameter on Spirit and Opportunity, which will help Curiosity roll over obstacles up to 75 centimeters (30 inches) high.

5. Rover Power: A nuclear battery will enable Curiosity to operate year-round and farther from the equator than would be possible with only solar power.

For more about Curiosity see the NASA webpage about the Mars Science Lab.

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nicholos Wethington

NASA to Send a Probe Into the Sun

An artist's impression of the Solar Probe Plus satellite, which will fly into the corona of the Sun to get an unprecedented look at how our Sun works. Image Credit: NASA

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NASA recently announced its choices for the experiments to fly aboard the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft, which is slated to launch no later than 2018. This spacecraft will perform the unprecedented task of flying into the Sun’s atmosphere – or corona – to take measurements of the plasma, magnetic fields and dust that surround our nearest star. It will be the first human-made satellite to approach the Sun at such a close proximity.

The previous record-holder for a spacecraft that approached the Sun was Helios 2, which came within 27 million miles (43.5 million kilometers) of the Sun in 1976. Solar Probe Plus will shatter that record, flying to 3.7 million miles (5.9 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface at its closest approach. In flying so close to the Sun, the spacecraft will be able to get amazingly detailed data on the structure of the atmosphere that surrounds the Sun.

As you can imagine, it gets a little toasty as one gets that close to the Sun. Solar Probe Plus will utilize a special heat shield made of an 8-foot (2.4 m), 4.5 inch (11 cm)-thick special carbon-composite foam plate that will protect the craft from temperatures of up to 2600 degrees Fahrenheit (1400 degrees Celsius) and intense solar radiation. The heat shield is a modified version of that which was used in the MESSENGER mission to Mercury.

NASA has chosen five science projects out of the thirteen that were proposed since 2009. The selected proposals are, according to the press release:

— Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation: principal investigator, Justin C. Kasper, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. This investigation will specifically count the most abundant particles in the solar wind — electrons, protons and helium ions — and measure their properties. The investigation also is designed to catch some of the particles in a special cup for direct analysis.
— Wide-field Imager: principal investigator, Russell Howard, Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. This telescope will make 3-D images of the sun’s corona, or atmosphere. The experiment actually will see the solar wind and provide 3-D images of clouds and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft. This investigation complements instruments on the spacecraft providing direct measurements by imaging the plasma the other instruments sample.
— Fields Experiment: principal investigator, Stuart Bale, University of California Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. This investigation will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves that course through the sun’s atmospheric plasma. The experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, registering voltage signatures when specks of space dust hit the spacecraft’s antenna.
— Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun:principal investigator, David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. This investigation consists of two instruments that will take an inventory of elements in the sun’s atmosphere using a mass spectrometer to weigh and sort ions in the vicinity of the spacecraft.
— Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus: principal investigator, Marco Velli of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Velli is the mission’s observatory scientist, responsible for serving as a senior scientist on the science working group. He will provide an independent assessment of scientific performance and act as a community advocate for the mission.

Two important questions that the mission hopes to answer is the perplexing mystery of why the Sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface, and the mechanism for the solar wind that emanates from the Sun into the Solar System. The spacecraft will have a front-row seat to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic speed.

Because of the conservation of momentum, it takes a lot of slowing down to send a spacecraft towards the Sun. The Earth and objects on the Earth are traveling around the Sun at an average of 30 kilometers per second (67,000 miles per hour). So, to slow the spacecraft down enough to get it close to the Sun, it will have to fly around Venus seven times! This is the opposite of a gravity assist, or “slingshot”, in which a satellite gains energy by flying by a planet. In the case of Solar Probe Plus, as well as that of MESSENGER, multiple flybys of Venus imparts some of the craft’s energy to Venus, thereby slowing down the spacecraft.

The Solar Probe Plus mission is part of NASA’s “Living With a Star Program”, of which the Solar Dynamics Observatory is also a mission. This program is designed to study the impact our Sun has on the space environment of the Solar System, and acquire data to better equip future space missions.

Source: NASA press release, APL mission site

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Viking Experiment May Have Found Life’s Building Blocks on Mars After All

View of Mars from the Viking lander in 1976. Credit: NASA

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A new look at data from the Mars Viking landers concludes that the two landers may have found the building blocks of life on the Red Planet after all way back in 1976. The surprise discovery of perchlorates by the Phoenix mission on Mars 32 years later could mean the way the Viking experiment was set up actually would have destroyed any carbon-based chemical building blocks of life – what the experiment set about to try and find.

“This doesn’t say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question,” said Chris McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center. McKay coauthored a study published online by the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets, reanalyzing results of Viking’s tests for organic chemicals in Martian soil.

The Viking lander scooped up some soil, put it in a tiny oven and heated the sample. The only organic chemicals identified in the Martian soil from that experiment chloromethane and dichloromethane — chlorine compounds interpreted at the time as likely contaminants from cleaning fluids used on the spacecraft before it left Earth. But those chemicals are exactly what the new study found when a little perchlorate — the surprise finding from Phoenix — was added to desert soil from Chile containing organics and analyzed in the manner of the Viking tests.

“Our results suggest that not only organics, but also perchlorate, may have been present in the soil at both Viking landing sites,” said the study’s lead author, Rafael Navarro-González of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.

The Viking experiment results have been rather controversial over the years. There are some scientists who say the experiment actually did find evidence for life, and others who say the results were inconclusive.

McKay said that organics can come from non-biological or biological sources. Many meteorites raining onto Mars and Earth for the past 5 billion years contain organics. Even if Mars has never had life, scientists before Viking anticipated that Martian soil would contain organics from meteorites.

“The lack of organics was a big surprise from the Vikings,” McKay said. “But for 30 years we were looking at a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. Phoenix has provided the missing piece: perchlorate. The perchlorate discovery by Phoenix was one of the most important results from Mars since Viking.” Perchlorate, an ion of chlorine and oxygen, becomes a strong oxidant when heated. “It could sit there in the Martian soil with organics around it for billions of years and not break them down, but when you heat the soil to check for organics, the perchlorate destroys them rapidly,” McKay said.

This interpretation proposed by Navarro-González and his four co-authors challenges the interpretation by Viking scientists that Martian organic compounds were not present in their samples at the detection limit of the Viking experiment. Instead, the Viking scientists interpreted the chlorine compounds as contaminants.

How will we know for sure? The Mars Science Lab mission, with the car-sized rover called Curiosity could help resolve this question.

The Mars Science Lab is going to the Red Planet in 2012, and on board will be the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument SAM can check for organics in Martian soil and powdered rocks by baking samples to even higher temperatures than Viking did, and also by using an alternative liquid-extraction method at much lower heat. Combining these methods on a range of samples may enable further testing of the new report’s hypothesis that oxidation by heated perchlorates that might have been present in the Viking samples was destroying organics.

One reason the chlorinated organics found by Viking were interpreted as contaminants from Earth was that the ratio of two isotopes of chlorine in them matched the three-to-one ratio for those isotopes on Earth. The ratio for them on Mars has not been clearly determined yet. If it is found to be much different than Earth’s, that would support the 1970s interpretation.

If organic compounds can indeed persist in the surface soil of Mars, contrary to the predominant thinking for three decades, one way to search for evidence of life on Mars could be to check for types of large, complex organic molecules, such as DNA, that are indicators of biological activity. “If organics cannot persist at the surface, that approach would not be wise, but if they can, it’s a different story,” McKay said.

Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets. (paper not published online at the time of this writing)

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Horizons Mission Practices Telescopic Imager on Pluto’s Twin

New Horizons image of Neptune and its largest moon, Triton. June 23, 2010. Credit: NASA

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This summer, the New Horizons spacecraft was awoken for its annual systems checkout, and took the opportunity to exercise the long range camera by snapping pictures of Neptune, which at the time, was 3.5 billion km (2.15 billion miles) away. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) snapped several photos of the gas giant, but Neptune was not alone! The moon Triton made a cameo appearance. And the New Horizons team said that since Triton is often called Pluto’s “twin” it was perfect target practice for imaging its ultimate target, Pluto.

This image gets us excited for 2015 when New Horizons will approach and make the closest flyby ever of Pluto.

“That we were able to see Triton so close to Neptune, which is approximately 100 times brighter, shows us that the camera is working exactly as designed,” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “This was a good test for LORRI.”

Weaver pointed out that the solar phase angle (the spacecraft-planet-Sun angle) was 34 degrees and the solar elongation angle (planet-spacecraft-Sun angle) was 95 degrees. Only New Horizons can observe Neptune at such large solar phase angles, which he says is key to studying the light-scattering properties of Neptune’s and Triton’s atmospheres.

“As New Horizons has traveled outward across the solar system, we’ve been using our imagers to make just such special-purpose studies of the giant planets and their moons because this is a small but completely unique contribution that New Horizons can make — because of our position out among the giant planets,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern.

Triton is slightly larger than Pluto, 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) in diameter compared to Pluto’s 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles). Both objects have atmospheres composed mostly of nitrogen gas with a surface pressure only 1/70,000th of Earth’s, and comparably cold surface temperatures approaching minus-400 degrees Fahrenheit. Triton is widely believed to have been a member of the Kuiper Belt (as Pluto still is) that was captured into orbit around Neptune, probably during a collision early in the solar system’s history.

Source: New Horizons

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

JAXA Delays Releasing Details of Hayabusa Sample Return

Hayabusa's shadow beside a circled reflective target it dropped as a guide for its sample recovery approach. Credit: JAXA

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No news yet if there are specks of asteroid dust in the Haybusa sample return container. JAXA has decided to postpone releasing any information, including publishing a detailed analysis of the particles that may have been collected. According to The Japan Times, JAXA said it is taking more time than originally expected to collect the particles because they are smaller than it was assumed they’d be. This provides some hope, however, that there is actually something of interest in the container.

Originally, JAXA had hoped to publish a report by September, but now it’s looking like December or later.

JAXA said it is going to take several hours to collect just one particle, which likely measures just a few thousandths of a millimeter in diameter. Munetaka Ueno, a senior JAXA official, said the agency wants to analyze the particles with extreme care because repeating the process will be difficult.

The original plan was for JAXA to remove the particles and then let researchers across the country for a more detailed analysis.

We waited seven years for Haybusa to fly to and then return home from asteroid Itokawa, so we should be able to wait a couple more months. Here’s hoping the particle extraction doesn’t encounter as many problems as the spacecraft had.

Source: The Japan Times

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Amazing Image: Map of Magnetic Field Lines of the Sun

Magnetic field lines on the Sun, on August 20, 2010. Credit: NASA SDO/Lockheed Martin Space Systems Compan

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The Sun’s corona is threaded with a complex network of magnetic fields, and this amazing new image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the magnetic field lines associated with a coronal hole that is now turning to face Earth. This map is from data taken on August 20, 2010 by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument (HMI). The magnetic field lines are color coded: white lines show fields that are closed, not releasing solar wind, and gold lines show open fields, letting solar wind escape. Understanding these magnetic fields is important because it is thought that solar storms and flares, which can affect us here on Earth, result from changes in the structure and connections of these fields.

Coronal holes are large regions in the corona that are darker, less dense and cooler than surrounding areas. The open structure of their magnetic field allows a constant flow of high-density plasma to stream out of the holes. There is an increase in the intensity of the solar wind effects on Earth when a coronal hole faces.

During a solar minimum, such as the one from which the Sun is just emerging, coronal holes are mainly found at the Sun’s polar regions, but they can be located anywhere on the sun during solar maximum. The fast-moving component of the solar wind is known to travel along open magnetic field lines that pass through coronal holes.

Scientists are finding out that much of the structure of the Sun’s corona is shaped by the magnetic field. Although it varies over time and from place to place on the Sun, the Sun’s magnetic field can be very strong. Inside sunspots, the magnetic field can be several thousand times the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Learn more about magnetic field lines and how SDO’s HMI instrument will help us to better understand the Sun in this video from SDO:

More info: HMI webpage, SDO website

Sources: @Camilla_SDO Twitpic page, SDO Facebook, Solar Physics page from Montana University

Posted on by Jason Rhian

Desert RATS – On The Move

NASA's Desert RATS will conduct field tests at the end of this month.

 

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For some fourteen years now NASA‘s Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS) team has been testing out the viability of many of NASA’s vehicles, space suits, habitats and robotic systems in extreme environments.   Like their durable name-sake, the Desert RATS have proven to be resilient and flexible, adapting to the changing NASA environment. When it was announced that NASA would move away from the Constellation Program and toward other objectives such as asteroids and possibly Mars – the Desert RATS picked up the challenge and modified their regimen to reflect this change.

Testing this year will take place from Aug. 31 until Sept. 15 and will shakedown many new design concepts. The former Electric Lunar Rovers, now dubbed Space Exploration Vehicles will be tested at the site requiring simulated astronauts to live in these vehicles for a week. 

No Desert RATS expedition would be incomplete without some incredible robots to assist their human companions. There are the Tri-ATHLETEs (Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) – these wheeled, spidery creations have six independent ‘legs’ each with a wheel at the base and can be fitted with different ‘tops” for each mission. Robonaut 2, one of NASA’s new robotic rock-stars, has been converted into a four-wheeled variant dubbed Centaur 2 and will be tested this year. This variation could be a potential mode of transport for NASA. 

However, this year’s rotation is all about the “hab.” The Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) Project is an inter-agency project consisting of NASA architects, scientists and engineers. These groups are working to develop living quarters, workspaces, and laboratories for future space missions, working under the “build a little – test a little” philosophy. This area will serve as a laboratory, a place for maintenance and a staging area in the event of a medical emergency. 

Robonaut-1 is seen here in its Centaur configuration. Photo Credit: NASA/Joe Bibby

“This allows us to have far greater flexibility,” said Tracy Gill, NASA’s Deputy Project Manager for the habitat element of this project. “These habitats are currently in the process of being developed further to make them even more adaptable.” 

NASA is working with the National Space Grant Foundation to develop an inflatable “loft” that will be attached to the HDU. This will mean that astronauts won’t have to don a space suit to travel from their living quarters to where they work – they would simply have to go “upstairs.” In an effort to promote science, technology, engineering and math (known as STEM) in college-age students, the X-Hab Academic Innovation Competition is working to sponsor development of these inflatable habitat concepts. The goal is for senior and graduate-level design students to design, manufacture, assemble, and test an inflatable loft that will be integrated on top of an existing NASA built hard shell prototype. 

As with any year the Desert RATS test out new concepts, this year promises to display many futuristic ideas that one day may be used in the real world(s). This year is slightly different however, in that the elements being tested are designed to be readily adaptable toward whatever NASA will eventually be called to do. During the Apollo era, astronauts were trained by “the King” – Farouk El-Baz. El-Baz worked with the astronauts so that they would be intimately familiar with the lunar surface, that they had the training and tools to get the job done. These annual event – would make “the King” – proud.